Eminem and Yelawolf Cover VIBE’s Year End Issue (Excerpts)

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Eminem, what advice do you offer, if any, on being scrutinized for being a white rapper. Do you guys ever talk about race in that way?

Eminem: We make jokes about it, but I don’t think we talk about it in depth. As I was listening to his music, I am not even thinking about any of that shit. It’s just the music. That’s one of the things that’s great about it. I’m not even thinking about it when I hear the music.

Yelawolf: We do poke fun of it because it’s funny. Like, he calls me White Dog.

Oh, you called him that on the BET Awards Cypher. I didn’t realize it was an ongoing joke?

EM: Yeah, or Beige Sheep. [Laughs]

YW: Cracker Nuts. Whatever, I think it’s kinda unspoken.

EM: We deal with it enough as it is. So now, let’s make music.

YW: Let’s make great records. At the end of the day, that’s all there is to do.

Yelawolf’s thoughts on White Rappers using the N-Word:

When Yelawolf heard the presumptu- ous white female rapper V-Nasty was peppering her sarcastic raps with the N- word, he called it embarrassing, telling VladTV that an N-bomb-dropping white rapper might find themselves “slapped up, and it might be by a white boy.” While he admits to using the word as a child, he says the word term is off limits for any white person, rapper or otherwise.

“[In Alabama] we have a dark his- tory concerning the relationship be- tween Black and white people. I’m not a role model by any means, but if I said it around the house I got popped in the mouth,” he says, noting that his Black friends used the word as a term of endearment for him as well.

Eminem and Yelawolf talk about their past history with drugs:

You mentioned getting yourself right. Are you completely clean these days as far as alcohol and drugs?

EM: Except for the heroin I shot up this morning. Except for that, I’m clean. [Laughs]

While you’re clean, Yelawolf here smokes weed and—

Yelawolf: No, I don’t.

I hear that in your music a lot.

YW: I started smoking weed at 11. By 12, I was smoking dust. Thirteen, acid, Freon, special k, mushrooms; 16 years old, I was selling X pills at school. Not even because I was a good dope boy, but because I was a scumbag. It was called chocolate chip, and it had heroin in it. I used to take that shit and go to class. I went so heavy into drugs that I had a bad trip one time that lasted for months.